


By the Grace of the Valar

by AllThatWeSeeOrSeem



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Archive Warning For Major Character Death Is For Bard's Death Only, Barduil - Freeform, Elves Living Into The Modern World, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Incest, Kissing, Multi, Non-Graphic Smut, Non-Graphic Violence, Oral Sex, Overly Dramatic/Emotional Characters, Polyamory, Reincarnation, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3557342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllThatWeSeeOrSeem/pseuds/AllThatWeSeeOrSeem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maglor disappears and is never heard from again. The fates of Elladan and Elrohir are unknown. Thranduil refuses to leave Arda even after the last elves have sailed, overcome by grief for the mortal he had loved. Millennia later in the world of men, the four elves find each other, and Thranduil is about to find someone else who he had thought was lost forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Thousand Ways To Fall In Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3147755) by [LittleLynn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLynn/pseuds/LittleLynn). 



> This was one of those shivery, ‘I can’t believe this came out of my brain’ fics that my muse had half written before I could even open a Word document. It’s also one of those ‘this makes sense to me because I can see it so clearly in my mind, but for all I know it might be utter nonsense to everyone else’. At any rate, to me, it might just be the best fanfic I have ever written.
> 
> Greatly inspired (and written with permission) by Chapter 80 of “A Thousand Ways To Fall In Love” by the wonderful and talented LittleLynn. If you’re not reading these stories, you’re really missing out!
> 
> Also inspired by the ending of Dracula Untold (it’s not necessary to have seen it to read this fic, but you should definitely see it as it’s awesome).

When Bard dies, a stooped and aged king, Dale mourns. 

When the horns sound their fateful call, Thranduil comes down from his kingdom alone and enters the cemetery outside the city walls and, though the Woodland Realm does not yet know it, it is the last time they will ever see their king. 

Dale's cemetery rests in a little valley, surrounded by a low stone wall, and hidden from sight of the city itself by a small hill. It had been used first by the original inhabitants of Dale, their large, ornate mausoleums turning the place into a small city for the dead to dwell within, and then it had grown again after the Battle of the Five Armies to hold the bodies of elves and dwarves and men alike. 

Thranduil stands silent and immobile while Bard’s grown children weep beside him, and Bard is laid to rest in a tomb many would argue is not grand enough for the body of a king. To look at him, none would think the elf grieved at all, and yet, there is a softness in his eyes and a tremble in his limbs, and his hair hides the flex of his jaw where he grits his teeth to hold back his screams. When the mourners turn to leave, he holds fast. They are young and mortal and their own lives still stretch out ahead of them and, while they feel sorrow for their loss, they do not have the luxury of time to grieve for long. Thranduil's own grief is not yet spent.

Tilda, sleeping babe slung low on her hip, reaches out to clasp his pale hand before turning away with a sad smile. Thranduil does not watch them leave. Though he has witnessed Bard’s children and grandchildren grow and loves them still, he knows they will not meet again. 

He remains in the cemetery for many long years, often stretched out on the low stone tomb that stands over the body of King Bard of Dale, unwilling, yet, to be parted from him. If only he had truly understood the consequences of loving a mortal man. At first, the people bring him food and drink, on the orders of King Bain, but after a time these offerings stop and a new tomb appears. Bain’s son rules, and then his son after him, and Thranduil no longer knows their names. 

Rumours of him spread. He becomes a frightening tale told among children, the ghost of the graveyard. Those who come to dig new graves do so quickly, in the full light of day, and funeral services likewise are brief and hushed.

Thranduil wanes but, perhaps by the grace of the Valar, he does not die. He loses the will and then the ability to hide the ruined half of his face, the deep scars burned into his flesh by dragon fire in ages past. In his deepest delirium he imagines he can see Bard’s image flitting among the tombs and he staggers after it, calling to him. The people of Dale hear his voice in the night and shutter their windows against it. Their children are raised on tales of him, a mournful spirit on the edges of their collective consciousness. 

“Bard, Bard!” the children tease each other, drawing out the word in a parody of his cry.

And then, “Boo, boo!” it changes over time, shortened in young mouths for the ease of repetition. It becomes the cry of a spectre in the darkness.

The offerings return, like appeasement gifts to a malevolent god. He eats only when the pangs of hunger threaten to chase the memory of Bard’s face from his mind, drinks only when the thirst becomes unbearable. He endures the full scorching sun of summer and the biting cold of winter. The clothing he wears, even in its fine elven make, becomes worn and tattered and hangs from him in rags. 

He howls the night that time and weather and the weight of his own body upon it finally cracks the long slab of stone over Bard's tomb. Nevertheless, he will not leave it. The cemetery falls into disuse as the practices of Dale's people change. 

In time, the two Blue Wizards come out of the east. Drawn by the hushed tales of his presence, they pause on their way into the West to finally pry him from the cemetery and back into the crumbling ruins of his own halls. They find his crown where he had left it, on the floor at the foot of his throne the day he received word of Bard's death, and they place it once again upon his head. Together they restore his ability to mask his scars, though Thranduil will not allow them to heal him completely. He had shown his fire-ravaged face once to Bard in a moment of drunken honesty, Bard who had flinched only in sympathy and had not turned away from the sight. 

The wizards care for him for a long time, and slowly they bring him back to himself, and then they are gone. Thranduil, whether he wishes it or not, endures.

But there are now no ships left that can take him to the Undying Lands. The last ship to sail takes his son from him without a farewell, and still he lingers, until even the Grey Havens are emptied and there is no one to build a ship to bear him away from the shores of Arda should he wish to leave.

He is alone in the rapidly changing world of men.

Centuries pass, and then millennia, and Thranduil loses track of the passing of time and the turn of the ages. The trees at the edges of his forest begin to disappear, cut down to build cities and empires, cleared away to make room for farmland and pastures. He does not begrudge them their theft; he does not care. 

Finally the halls of his kingdom become uninhabitable, and it is then, though he has not had subjects to rule over for quite some time, that he throws off the title of king, and becomes merely Thranduil, casting aside his crown for the last time. In one final act in reverence to the life he had and the lives of his people, he conceals the entrance to his underground halls so that no mortal will ever find and wonder at them. Though he never returns to check, it is possible the remnants of his kingdom remain there still, and will continue to do so until the world shudders to its end. 

When he emerges he finds that the city which had once been Dale has been abandoned, it's people scattered. Bard's descendants, if they live, are lost to him. The walls of the city lie in ruins, the cemetery overgrown and crumbling. Bard's tomb has sunk down into the ground, until only the covering stone is visible, and long grass grows around it. Thranduil touches the moss-choked stone reverently, running his fingers along the break which had formed as he had yet lain on top of it. 

This time, he knows he cannot linger. After a farewell and a silent promise to return, he moves off into a world he no longer recognizes.

At first, he shuns the mortal realm, the great cities they have built, the changes they have wrought on the landscape, rendering it unrecognisable as the same lands Thranduil once knew. But he fails to find a haven; the trees of Lothlorian have been felled, the hidden valley of Imladris, without the protection of Lord Elrond, is no longer a secret. Eventually mortals are too numerous to hide from, and he is forced to adapt to their ways and walk among them. 

He is too proud to steal or beg. What he cannot fight for or pay for he goes without and feels no loss. He carries only one thing with him and has killed men for trying to take it from him; a small, plain wooden box. 

He watches the fall of Mesopotamia, the rise of Rome. He joins and fights for the great Alexander, but flees again when the mortal king succumbs and dies of a broken heart. He spends some time in a monastery and they cut off his hair, and ever afterwards he vows to wear it long as he did before. They fail to teach him humility. They fail to teach him to pray. He goes through the motions but while those around him mutter pleas for the forgiveness of sins he instead lets his mind drift blank, to seek what little peace it can. If the Valar have abandoned him, the gods of men certainly want nothing to do with him. 

When the silence of the cloister becomes maddening, he takes up with the band of Vikings who come to raid the monastery of its treasures. He turns on his brothers and they fall to his sword and there is no loyalty in his heart for any of them. 

There is no place and no people who can claim him for long. He lets no one close to him, and there are countless mortals who live and fight and die beside him and know nothing more than his name. 

But then, he finds Maglor on a battlefield in 1192.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so not even sure where the Maglor/Maedhros came from, honestly. These characters write their own stories, I'm just their puppet. Anyway, all the chapters are written, I just edit them extensively (and they always seem to get longer when I do) before I post, so it may take a day or two for each one. I'm also staunchly ignoring the essay I should be writing in favour of doing so. How I'm still passing university I'll never know (after 8 years, sometimes I wish I would fail just to make it all stop). Big thanks, as always, to everyone who has read, left kudos, and commented!

The battlefield is a churned mess of mud and blood and the dung of frightened horses. Thranduil slices his way through men he has no quarrel with, who have done no wrong against him. He fights because he is good at it, because, in this changed world where he holds no titles and owns no land they acknowledge, it is one of the few things he can set himself to that is not beneath him. His skill and regal bearing set him apart, draw attention and respect. 

He fights as he always has, with two streamlined blades in an era where the broadsword reigns, weighty and thick. There are usually none on the field who can match him. Always there are those who fight well, but not one can equal the millennia of training and battle experience he has behind him. None have faced dragons or orc armies, and these new wars are almost tame in comparison with what he has known. 

But this time, there is one who outshines Thranduil. 

As soon as he lays eyes on him across the battlefield, Thranduil knows. The warrior is as merciless as he is graceful, his fighting style a rare glimpse into a world which has long passed on and been forgotten. Wearing no helm, his angelic face is indifferent as he cuts a wide path through the soldiers, swinging his massive sword as though it were a weapon half its weight. He leaves a trail of bodies in his wake along the churned earth, dark hair flying free like a banner behind him. Those he approaches cower before him. Some turn and flee, heedless of their commander’s orders. Thranduil is so in awe that he is nearly cut down himself.

They are on opposite sides of the war, but the army which Thranduil had chosen to ally himself with comes out victorious. 

After the battle, it is only Thranduil’s words to his commander and the respect the commander has for the one who fought so viciously, that spares the warrior’s life. All others are slaughtered.

He approaches the warrior, whose wrists have been bound but who stands straight and proud even flanked by guards, their swords still drawn and bloody. Thranduil, as always, has his hair carefully drawn down over his ears, but he knows the recognition when he sees it bloom alongside hope in the other’s eyes.

“Fight for us” Thranduil says, “and my commander will spare you.”

“I wish not to fight at all.” The other says, “But this is their world, and they would have our skill to use as their weapon.” 

“We are not their playthings.” Thranduil hisses, then, “I will tell my commander you agree to the terms.”

“Tell him what you will; I will be gone from here come morning if I have to strike down a hundred sentinels to do it.”

The men who stand on either side of him shuffle their feet nervously. Thranduil smiles.

Maglor has no words of thanks for him for being spared. He is impossibly ancient, old when Thranduil was young, and because he spent the greatest ages of Arda in isolation and only emerged when the world of men landed on his doorstep, he has no inkling of who Thranduil had been.

But Thranduil knows Maglor. He remembers the stories told to him as a child of the second son of Fëanor and how he had wandered off along the shorelines of the world and was never heard from again, and Thranduil can do nothing but gaze at the other elf in wonder.

They hold each other that night, in a tent on the blood-soaked battleground, as far as they know the last two of their kind. Near dawn they leave, with no blood shed, all sentries suspiciously absent from their posts.

Over the next centuries they wind their lives together. Their share home and hearth and bed. Thranduil takes Maglor from behind, always, that dark hair too long and too straight, but wrapped around his fist none the less. He wants, needs, what Maglor cannot give him. But it is all that he has. 

It does the trick for Maglor, though, who Thranduil can hear pant the name of his long dead brother as they strain towards completion. More than once the name of Maedhros is forced from Maglor’s lips as he comes, and they both ignore it. 

Neither makes an effort to pretend that the other is who they truly want, and for his part Thranduil prefers it that way. 

Many nights Maglor weeps for his family, for his eldest brother, ever hopeful that he may yet be reborn and returned to him. But to Thranduil, it is clear that the time for rebirth is over. No elves will be returned to the world now so owned by the race of men.

One night it 1317, Maglor brings a woman into their bed. She is not charming or pretty, but when she unbinds her hair to reveal long tresses of the exact russet shade Maglor has described in hushed tones late at night, Thranduil understands. 

Thranduil will not touch her. Maglor offers, because that is his nature, and she is willing, but he has long since forsworn mortal lovers. Instead he spends the night in a straight-backed velvet chair in the main room while Maglor locks himself and the woman away in the bedroom. They remain there all night and all the next day, and when Thranduil wakes on the morning of the second day, the bedroom door stands open and she is gone. Maglor never speaks of her again.

They flee the battlefields and the plagues, and Maglor makes use of the skills he learned from his infamous father, forging gold and silver and fine jewels. Thranduil is still too proud to dirty his hands, so he takes to poetry and plays and the written word. 

Soon there are more sonnets written to Bard than the world will ever see for any other, and still Thranduil’s hearth fire consumes all but a few before any other eyes can read them. 

Maglor finds the survivors one day, tucked between the leaves of a book on the shelf of their sitting room. The year is 1664, and Maglor is in the process of evaluating the contents of the house. He wants to move them. They have stayed too long in one place and the rumours and whispers have begun, but for the first time in a long time they are close to Bard’s grave, and Thranduil struggles against leaving it. 

“You long for him, even now.” Maglor says, brandishing the sheets of parchment before Thranduil launches himself across the room to snatch them from his grasp.

“I will ache for him for as long as I draw breath.”

“He was mortal, Thranduil, who can say where even his soul is now? They talk of Heaven, but then they spoke of Valhalla just as ardently, and Elysium, and - ”

“Very _well_ , Maglor, you have made your point.”

But Thranduil is, as ever, steadfast in his passion and grief. Maglor kisses an apology into his mouth, and does not protest when Thranduil bears him down to the thick rug beneath them.

Maglor never questions the small wooden box, and in time he becomes as protective of it as Thranduil is. When fire breaks out in 1729, it is Maglor who grabs the box first, thrusting it into Thranduil’s hands even as he ushers him out of the house. It is the only thing besides themselves that is spared the flames. 

Maglor finds a new place for them to live, and Thranduil parts once again from Bards’ tomb, now no more than a tiny divot in the landscape of a broad open field, and they carry on.

For centuries, they are together. Not quite friends, and only lovers because it suits them to be, they cling to each other as the last of a forgotten race, the embodiment of myth and legend.

And then the two of them find that they are not so alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting there! I promise Bard will be in the next chapter, or the one after that at the latest. This chapter was originally only part of one, but it grew too long in editing. Hopefully that's a good thing? 
> 
> WARNING for this chapter: contains x1 use of a colourful four letter word which rhymes with duck. Sorry.

They are twin terrors in bell bottoms and platform shoes, wreathed in pot fumes and nearly unrecognizable as the sons of the great lord Elrond. They wear matching leather braids around their heads like the parody of the circlets they should exhibit instead, their dark hair long and tousled beneath. It is Maglor who finds them, as he found their father and his brother all those ages ago, and brings them home to Thranduil just as he brought their sire and uncle to Meadhros, as though they are prizes he has won at the circus. 

Thranduil’s initial reaction to them is distaste. They have been living wild, “like beasts among men.” Elladan says, and Elrohir looks up and grins at him as though they are sharing an old and private joke. 

And wild they were. In ages past they had spent long stretches of time among mortals, and they had not given up those ways, even though orc hunting has been replaced by recreational drugs and reckless sex and playing music on street corners to fund both. Elladan has a guitar and Elrohir the violin, and while they are often enough the ones being paid for either activity, they always turn to music when it calls to them.

Still they are elven, and Maglor holds fast to them, and in time Thranduil, too, finds himself loath to part from them. 

“Are there others?” Elrohir wants to know more than anything else, “are we the only ones who did not sail?”

But they have no answers for him.

The first night the four of them are together, they pile into the king size bed and fuck until dawn. 

Afterwards it is Maglor who holds the brothers in his arms, one on either side of him, and coos over them, the mirror images of the twins he lost so long ago, weaned on blood and death and ill-fated oaths. They tell him of their father, of the life he led, of their mother and their sister. They tell him what they know of their uncle, who had chosen a mortal life and passed before they had even been born. It only prompts fresh tears, and Thranduil abandons them to it, stands naked in the small kitchen at 4am stirring errant leaves around in a rapidly cooling mug of tea. 

When he returns to the room in search of a robe, he is met with the sight of three dark heads resting sleepily against the pillows. But not the one he wants to see. 

“Come back to bed.” Maglor murmurs, but Thranduil turns away.

Maglor has questions of his own, but they are saved until morning. The three of them sit at the round Formica table in the sunny kitchen while Thranduil tries valiantly not to burn pancakes. It is entirely too domestic and makes him bristle, but when Elrohir asks if he could have banana in his, Thranduil obligingly tears one from the bunch sitting in the corner of the counter and chops it into the batter. 

“How many of Elros’ descendants remain?”

Maglor’s voice is quiet and thoughtful, but it silences the kitchen. He takes no notice of the glances the twins exchange, his eyes turned down to the tabletop, unfocused. Only Thranduil sees how firm his grip is on the handle of his cup of coffee, knuckles white.

“I see them sometimes.” He says distantly, “I see his eyes in the faces of strangers on the street, in paintings, in photographs. It is how I found you. It is how I know he endures.”

Thranduil says nothing of what is clearly wishful thinking, though he shares a look with the twins over Maglor’s dark head. If the bloodline endures, it is by now diluted beyond recognition.

It is Elladan who speaks, “We know not. We lost contact with them long ago.”

Maglor says nothing farther. Thranduil re-fills his cup with bitter coffee, and then stirs three sugars into it when Maglor makes no move to do it himself. 

The coffee, and Maglor, remain as they are until nightfall, and Maglor is only roused when Elrohir goes to him and tells him that they have decided to stay. 

And they do. Though the lifestyle suited them well, the twin sons of Elrond abandon their ways on the street to blend almost seamlessly into the life Thranduil and Maglor have wrought. 

But they are not tamed. 

They rise early and stay out late, drawing Maglor, who goes placidly, and Thranduil, who follows reluctantly, from out of their isolation. The twins teach them to appreciate the world men have created. They bring mortals into their lives, who Maglor embraces with open arms. Men and woman come and go among them, beautiful and fragile, and more than once Thranduil awakens in the morning only to find a warm, soft, achingly mortal body next to him. Always he rolls them away from him, into Elladan’s arms or Elrohir’s or even Maglor’s. Sometimes he flees the bed entirely. In the end, the four of them are still alone. 

"We could bring you Bard" Elladan offers once, and once only, "tell us how he appeared, and we will find you someone in this age who looks near enough like him."

Thranduil very nearly hits him.

Maglor welcomes their music most of all, though he himself has had little to do with songs over the last centuries. The tiny apartment is soon filled with it, much to the displeasure of those living around them. The twins teach even Thranduil to dance again. The Beatles reign supreme and there is laughter in their home again. 

Elrohir is the one who has learned how to drive, wrapping his lips around a stranger’s cock in exchange for lessons, bartering and trading for a licence which would pass a cursory inspection should he ever be pulled over. The twins have no money of their own, preferring more universal currencies, but Elladan works to persuade Maglor to purchase a VW bus so that they might have some freedom beyond public transit. And Maglor does.

For the first year, Thranduil refuses to enter the automobile. The three of them go off and leave him at home like a spinster aunt, only to regale him upon their return with stories of the lands that lay beyond the city, and how they have changed. Finally, it is their persuasive kisses and pleading eyes that has him giving in and agreeing to go with them.

He is glad at once that it is Elrohir who drives, for he is less reckless than his brother. Of the four, Thranduil is the only one who bothers with the seatbelt, fastening and re-fastening it to make sure it is secure. Elladan laughs. Still, Thranduil finds it difficult to pry his finger from the back of the seat in front of him, and he sits, rigid and uncertain, as the vehicle careens through traffic and then out onto the highway. 

Never has he travelled so fast, nor so far in so short a span of time. The one and only time he had travelled by train, it had been nearly a century ago, and the sluggish, coal-fed iron horse had seemed far more sure-footed than the Volkswagen. 

Maglor, noting his distress, tears him free of the lap belt and bears him down to the bench. The ancient elf undoes his pants, coaxes him to hardness, and then takes him into his mouth. It is awkward in the confines of the vehicle, but Thranduil can see that Elladan has turned to watch them, eyes half lidded. Elrohir’s foot becomes heavy on the gas pedal. 

Thranduil cries out and comes just as they pull into the parking lot at the base of a series of hiking trails. Elladan himself gasps and shudders, and then roots around under his seat for a box of tissues. He pulls a handful free from the box before turning to offer it to Maglor, who shakes his head. 

Maglor is eyeing Elrohir, who is breathing heavily, over the back of the seat. 

Elladan shrugs, tosses the tissues into his brother’s lap, and exits the vehicle. Thranduil follows him. Regardless of the pleasure of his first trip by automobile, he is overjoyed when seatbelts are made mandatory.

It is a Tuesday morning, and there are few enough other cars in the parking lot. Thranduil studies the trail maps with interest, before Elladan pulls him away with an amused shake of his head.

“We once roamed the wilds of the world, did you think it would be any different now?” he says with a grin that is unnerving.

They are joined soon by the others, and then Maglor leads them into the trees, passed the large authoritative sign warning them against leaving the trail. 

The forest is young; these are not the trees Thranduil once knew. Still, they are a comfort to his soul, and he runs his hands along their bark and whispers to them though they themselves are silent. 

“We awoke them, so long ago.” Maglor whispers, “but now they have fallen quiet once more, they have forgotten.”

“These are only the descendants of the trees we once spoke to.” Elrohir muses, “They have had no one to speak to them since. It will do no good to try and wake them. Let them sleep.”

With the four of them finally there together, none are eager to return home. They spend three days in the forest, living off the box of granola bars Elrohir had thought to pack and the cool, sweet water of a forest stream. They sleep under the stars, they sing, they have sex with abandon like wild forest nymphs.

When they emerge again, they find their vehicle has been towed away. They spend a farther two days walking the highway home.

Thranduil has not felt quite so alive in a very long time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Isn't Bard supposed to be in this, too?' you ask. Maybe the next chapter, I say. Or one more. Or the next one after that. In the meantime, here, have some more angst. Sorry. The next chapter is happier, that's a promise, and the one after that is even better. Also the twins have been muttering at me, too, so there might be a companion piece to this. Might. 
> 
> Also human history is so short and thoroughly accounted for, it's hard to fit Middle Earth into it's timeline. I hope this chapter adds a tiny bit of explanation on that. 
> 
> Same warning for last chapter also applied to this one. There needs to be a better word for that.

They are caught in limbo; refusing to sail, unable to die. They have crossed and criss-crossed the world so often, and it has been so changed, that Thranduil is not entirely sure how they would even reach the Undying Lands, which coast they could sail from.

Perhaps there is a touch of magic in it after all, for in this new age with its technologies, Aman does not appear on any satellite maps or aerial photographs, if it is even out there anymore at all. 

But it does not matter, because the twins will not leave, and Maglor will not leave them, and Thranduil will not leave him. Or Bard.

After nearly three hundred years, Thranduil and Maglor, now accompanied by the twins, return like those on pilgrimage to the borders of what was once Thranduil’s kingdom. 

The forest he had once so loved is no more. A new city has emerged, and skyscrapers of slick glass and metal sit now where the dusky stone walls of Dale once stood. Where the Battle of Five Armies was once fought, tidy little neighbourhoods have grown up instead.

If the digging of the foundations of these buildings had occasionally unearthed a rusty arrow point or the mangled remains of a shield or the broken bare bones of a soldier, they are carefully slotted into place in the long line of human history. Their oddity of design is explained away by personal preference or fleeting tradition, and after all, the bones of an elf or a dwarf or an orc, stripped of flesh, look no different than those of a man. 

The four of them take a house in the suburbs, and promptly shock their neighbours, both with their collective beauty and the open, free way they associate with each other. 

The house has two bedrooms. The twins claim one to themselves, but often enough they are all piled into one bed in the other. Thranduil will not claim the room as his, nor will Maglor. The times when Elladan and Elrohir do sleep on their own, Thranduil cracks open the bedroom window to let in the hot summer night air and fucks Maglor into the bed, using all the tricks he knows to get him to moan and scream particularly loud.

Afterwards, Maglor can never quite meet the eyes of their neighbours, but Thranduil does, his head held high and his gaze unwavering, until it is they who look away. 

Now that they are once again so close to where Bard’s body rests, Thranduil wastes no time in making his way back to it. He finds the place easily enough, in spite of all that has changed. He knows where it is, has the site etched in his heart and mind. 

But Bard’s grave, as everything else, has changed.

It is Maglor who comes, who prise him from the fresh pavement over where Bard’s body lays. A parking lot. Thranduil is hardly aware of the arms around him, of the fact that Maglor holds him on the ground as he howls. He does not notice the crowd that gathers, the faces of the onlookers whose expressions range from confused to sympathetic to annoyed. 

A parking lot! The first love of his life has no grave at all, and the second has asphalt for a tombstone. 

“There is nothing left of him down there.” Maglor says, and Thranduil knows he means it as a comfort, but in that moment Thranduil wants to kill him over those words.

At home he snatches the shabby wooden box from the shelf, fingers lingering in the wide groove on the lid that he has worn there from centuries of stroking it. Inside is all that remains of Bard; a few tattered strips of his burial shroud, the dusty fragments of a letter he once wrote to Thranduil concerning trade agreements with Dale (the ink long faded beyond legibility), and the signet ring he wore as king.

Thranduil himself had worn the ring after Bard’s death, until time and wear had taken its toll on the band and thinned it until it broke. Maglor had offered more than once to repair it, but Thranduil cannot bring himself to alter one scrap of the contents of the box.

Maglor has locked himself in the bedroom, but the twins come up behind him and wrap themselves around him in comfort.

“Why him?” Elrohir asks, “Why, after so long?”

“Because he never knew. My wife and I had a life together, a son, centuries of love and happiness. Bard grew old and died alone, and never knew I loved him. I hesitated too long when their lives are so brief…and I lost him before he was even mine to lose.”

They lead him to their bed, shooting disappointed and disapproving glances at the door behind which Maglor hides. But Thranduil can hear the weeping within and does not begrudge him his withdrawal. 

Elladan takes him in long, sure thrusts as Elrohir snuggles up to the front of him and gives over his mouth to be kissed. They have eased the box from his hands and set it aside on the nightstand, and Thranduil eyes it over the curve of Elrohir’s ear, even as he licks his way into the twin’s mouth.

When Thranduil next returns to the site of Bard’s tomb, there on the pavement has been painted a tribute to King Bard of Dale in effortless Quenya. The words will no doubt eventually be washed or worn away, and Thranduil does not make mention of what is so obviously Maglor’s penmanship, but the words bring him a small measure of comfort.

In this new city, they find themselves drawn out even farther from their seclusion. The world has grown louder, its people braver and brazen. War is merely a memory to the youth, an event in a far off county during their childhood. Most do not even remember watching a man walk on the moon for the first time. The world is crazy hair and neon clothing and fishnet stockings. It is video arcades and the first whispers of the internet. 

The brothers have taken to the punk style of leathers and studs, Elladan more so than Elrohir. Elladan shaves off either side of his head, and leaves the middle long and straight down his back, though Elrohir will not follow and for a few years they are for the first time easily distinguished. If not for the permanence and his awareness of the fleetingness of style, Thranduil suspects Elladan would add adornments to his body. He admires them on mortals, lovingly licking at nipple rings and running curious fingers over the lines of tattoos. 

Maglor favours oversized knit sweaters and snug jeans, and Thranduil himself accepts dark denim and t-shirts, and humours the twins when they gift him with a black leather jacket. The cascade of his white-blond hair is stark against it. 

They cause a commotion wherever they go, drawing wondering gazes and awed hushed whispers. They are former kings and lords, still tall and proud, and their very presence commands attention. When the four of them are together, even if it is only on a trip to the mall, the world halts around them. 

Elladan dances down the line of shops as Cindy Lauper croons from the mall speakers. Maglor laughs and jokingly tosses a quarter at him. It is a rare enough sound and Elladan grins, pulls Thranduil into his dance

Thranduil allows himself to be spun round, for once not caring of the scene they make in front of giggling teenagers and elderly couples shaking their heads.

Elladan snatches a tiara from a display, lightweight and tinny, its plastic jewels glittering in the florescent lights.

“A crown for the king” he laughs, placing it upon Thranduil’s head.

Thranduil dashes it off again, “I am a king no longer.”

“You are _our_ king.” Elladan replies, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. 

Thranduil sets the circlet on Maglor’s head instead, where its over-glossy metal clashes with the fine silver beads woven into the elf’s dark hair. Maglor still wears his hair long to his waist like a shroud. 

He presses a kiss to Thranduil’s forehead before removing the makeshift crown and setting it back on the shelf. 

“We are, none of us, what we once were.” He says.

And in this world, that is ok.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WolvenFlower has made some absolutely lovely art based on this chapter!   
> http://wolvenflower.tumblr.com/post/130092641720/sketchillustration-from-chapter-5-of-a-really

The century turns. 

They do little to celebrate the new millennium; they have all seen far too many of them. Elladan brings home a frankly ridiculous glittery candle in the shape of the numbers of the year and they light its three wicks, sit in the darkened living room and watch it burn. 

The television is on mute in the corner. On its screen young people dance and kiss and spill their drinks on each other at Time Square. They look happy. In the gloom of the living room, no one smiles.

At midnight, when the fireworks flash across the television and create dancing lights in the room, they kiss each other perfunctorily before going to bed. They do not make love. After all they do not love each other, except for the familial love which exists between the twins. Yet they lie naked together and hold each other and they are quiet, the silence heavy with the weight of yet another millennium passed. 

Thranduil remains awake long after the others have drifted off to sleep. He listens to their even breathing, not quite in sync. Elladan’s arm is heavy across his waist, his body warm against his, his breath hot against his bare shoulder. Elrohir’s back is against his chest, and when Thranduil breathes in he can smell the soft scent of his shampoo. He cannot see Maglor, though he can guess that, as always, the ancient elf sleeps on his back, his fingers tangled with Elrohir’s on his chest. 

He thinks briefly of waking one or all of them. He is hard and cannot sleep. He listens to the whistle of the heating vent under the bed and comes to the realization slowly that he would gladly do anything for them, die for any one of them. He has not felt such since Bard. But he loved Bard, and he does not love them.

The next morning dawns no different than the one before. 

In this new millennium even as prices soar they do not lack for money. Maglor has been wise, has saved and invested, moved stocks and bonds and funds around like the top accountant at a Fortune 500 company while Thranduil paid little attention. He catches a glimpse of a bank statement on Maglor’s desk one day and his eyebrows climb towards his hairline as he lifts it from the desktop in wonder. 

“And yet we live here?” 

Maglor turns in the chair and takes the paper gently but firmly from his grasp and sets it back on the desk, “And yet we live here.”

Thranduil frowns, “But with that we could live anywhere, have anything!”

“I did not spend centuries saving and growing that fortune so you could live like a king again.” Is the reply, though Maglor’s tone is one of amusement. “It is a safety net, should we need it. Should anything happen to one of us.”

“You expect trouble?” Elrohir asks. He has come up behind them, having overheard the conversation from the next room. “Elladan was once nearly burned at the stake for being…himself. There have been those who have wondered about us before, who see that we do not age or change, who look too closely and realize that we are different. Do you think they will ever come for us, even now?”

“No one will ever harm us.” Maglor’s vow is almost a growl.

He rises and steps around Thranduil, and pulls Elrohir to him, presses a kiss viciously to his forehead. Elrohir’s expression turns soft under Maglor’s care, and Thranduil wonders, not for the first time, what it is which blooms between them. 

In the new millennium Elrohir has mellowed. Elladan never would.

Elladan takes to writing, fantastic erotic stories given badly rendered covers by their publishers. They quickly gain a reputation of being accurate and thorough, but of course, when it comes to the pleasures of the flesh there is little that Elladan has not done. 

Elrohir takes his violin and begins playing in small, smoky basement clubs. Occasionally Elladan accompanies him, but often he goes alone. He is given little money, and asks for none. At Elladan’s urging he brings his most ardent admirers home, but spends little time with them himself. Most cannot tell the two of them apart.

In 2004, a group of men and women follow Elrohir home one night. They whistle and call at him, throw cigarette butts and small stones when he ignores them. They are drunk and they want him. They want his beauty and his unnatural grace, and they have heard of him, as far as they know, of his promiscuity and willingness to bed strangers. 

Elrohir is too kind hearted to turn on them. 

The commotion can be heard from inside the house. By the time Elrohir starts up the front path, Elladan has thrown the door open, and Maglor is standing on the wooden porch, fists clenched at his sides. 

The mortals do not dare approach the house. They do not dare even to enter the gate. They can recognize, even in their drunken state, the rage in Maglor’s eyes. To them he seems like an avenging angel, or perhaps a demon, uncaring of the laws of God or man in his quest for retribution. 

Elladan is no less angry. He glares at them from the doorway, arms folded over his chest. But, perhaps more frightening even than their hot anger, is the cold and naked malice in Thranduil’s gaze as he stands at Elladan’s shoulder. It is at this look that they finally turn and flee. 

Elrohir makes his way up the front steps unhindered.

Thranduil is the one to close the door behind him while Maglor and Elladan bustle Elrohir into the kitchen where the lighting is best.

“Praise the Valar you are unharmed.” Maglor breathes.

He has Elrohir in his arms while Elladan paces, back and forth like a caged animal, across the tiled kitchen floor.

“The Valar are dead.” Elladan says hollowly, and his brother shushes him, but he continues, “Or if they live, their thoughts are not with us, they are on the Undying Lands, with the rest of our kin.”

“The Valar care for the race of men as well, brother.” Elrohir protests in a small voice.

“Not these men” is the harsh reply.

Maglor kisses the tears from Elrohir’s face as Elladan storms from the room. Thranduil rolls his eyes. 

Thranduil is not in their bed that night, and only returns to the house at dawn. He is drenched in blood, his 19th century sword at his side, unused but kept at the ready since. In this new millennium there is no place or understanding for a former king who would avenge his own. No, here it is only murder, and he longs for the days when he could brandish his sword against anyone and be justified.

Elladan comes to him and kisses him violently, teeth biting into his lip. It is thankfulness and forgiveness, and because of it Elladan is the only one of them to see Thranduil weep.

He leads him into the bathroom and strips Thranduil’s ruined clothing from him. Under the scorching spray of the shower he holds and soothes him. 

“They were children.” 

“They were nothing” Elladan spits.

It is the only time Elladan turns against Man.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally happening, here we go!

The year is 2009, and they are content. They have settled into life in the suburbs, as well as they are able, and with the neighbourhood ever-changing around them, families moving in and away again, they have no plans to flee anytime soon. They know little of those who live near them, and their neighbours know little of them. It is best that way.

Only Ms. S. across the street pays them any mind. She is a tiny old thing and calls them her boys, and bakes cookies for them, and they mow her lawn in summer and shovel her path in winter and fix little things around her house so she doesn't have to dip into her pension fund. She was born in the house she lives in and will likely be living there long after they have moved on. 

She gossips at them, tells them stories of what life was like when she was young, and never guesses that they know equally well what she speaks of. 

When she brings forth old photographs from her youth, Maglor takes them from her frail hands with wonder. He stares. Among the photographs of her mischievous twin brothers are photographs of her, and in her portraits her hair is long and dark, and her grey eyes free of age and cataracts. In the fuzzy black and white photos the details are far from certain, but Maglor’s reaction to them is. 

Elrohir takes the pictures from his hand, glances at them, and then passes them to Elladan. They share a private look between them, a secret and silent understanding.

Maglor likewise says nothing, yet he stands from the gaudy floral print couch and goes to her. He towers so far above her that it is almost comical, but he embraces her gently, reverently. She seems taken aback, at first, but laughs and pats him on the back and tuts in mock disapproval. 

And with that, she becomes inseparably precious to them. 

With the exception of Elladan’s occasional eccentricities, they lead a simple life, a quiet life that draws them no undue attention. The world is now gas prices and unpredictable weather, monstrous grocery stores, Netflix, and fibreglass cars whose bumpers disintegrate at the smallest impact. It is all fluff and spun sugar, ephemeral and insubstantial. 

Elladan and Elrohir have replaced their drugs of choice with overpriced, over-spiced coffees, bitter and pungent drinks that Thranduil will never favour over wine, and Maglor will never choose over herbal teas. 

There’s a café on the corner behind the gas station, claiming world famous blueberry muffins which regular patrons know better than to order. The four of them are regular patrons. They have never been tempted by the blueberry muffins. 

One day they enter the café as they have done countless times, and there is nothing to indicate that this day should be so different than any of the ones before.

Thranduil is the first to enter, the strand of bells chiming above his head, the others behind him. Elrohir is talking to Maglor, but his words seem far away. Thranduil stops just inside the doorway. Against his will his legs will not move farther. The others pile up behind him. 

It is an impossible sight. Thranduil is sure for long moments that he is simply mistaken. Elladan steps around him, a question on his lips, and Thranduil grabs onto Elladan’s arm as his legs go weak and threaten to give way under him. 

Bard.

It _cannot be_ , because Bard is long dead, his bones turned to dust under fresh pavement. 

But it is.

Thranduil crosses the café in three strides and gathers the man up in his arms and, while Bard does not return the embrace, to his credit he does not pull away.

“Well, hello! Do I know you?”

The tone is amusement and confusion at war with each other, the voice itself familiar but for so long unheard it is like a balm to Thranduil’s fractured heart, and all at once he wonders how he ever survived the countless centuries without him. 

Thranduil eventually pulls back, if only to gaze into the man’s face and assure himself that yes, it is truly him.

He does not smell as Bard smelled, of tallow and smoke and fish, but rather of cheap cologne and cotton. His hair is shorter. And better groomed, and he wears worn jeans and a plain shirt. But he looks just as Bard did, his eyes are Bard’s eyes, and Thranduil knows in his very soul that Bard has been returned. 

“Bard.” Thranduil breathes.

“It’s Brad, actually, but close.” 

Brad is studying him, and Thranduil does not shy from meeting his gaze. 

“You look strangely familiar.” Brad chuckles after a long moment, “I feel like I knew you in another life.”

Thranduil wants desperately to tell him everything, the words crowd his mind. He wants the man in his arms again, he wants to tell him how long and deeply he loved him, he wants that hair tangled in his fingers and that voice in his ears, and he wants, he wants, he wants. But the words will not come. Instead he drops his forehead to the man's shoulder and cries, and his eyes burn and his throat stings and he wants to sob as though he were a child. 

“Drink with us.” Elladan says brightly from behind Thranduil’s shoulder.

Brad frowns, but then shrugs and nods, and relief sweeps through Thranduil so total and all encompassing and he would not have known what to do if the offer had been rejected. 

They commandeer chairs from other tables and sit, the five of them huddled around one small table in the corner. The introductions are an awkward affair, with Brad repeating each of their names several times with apologetic eyes, ensuring their correct pronunciation. Bard the diplomat. Bard the peacemaker. Bard, Bard, Bard. 

Brad.

Brad blushes and flusters under his gaze, but Thranduil cannot take his eyes off the man. Every so often Elladan will laugh, pick up the rapidly cooling coffee and tip some of the bitter liquid into his unresisting mouth. 

While Brad is avoiding Thranduil’s eyes, he is instead looking at the rest of him, at all of his companions seated around the table. It is clear that Brad is overwhelmed. Here he is not a king in his own right, has never sat around a council chamber, making decisions for the greater good of Dale. He has never fought in battles or slain a dragon. He is as dazed and awed by them as everyone else. 

Yet when Thranduil fights to keep him, he stays. Unresisting, willingly even. None of the others object to this addition to their lives; they accept Brad as readily as Thranduil. 

He has never married, has no children, has no one in fact but an ageing mother who lives halfway across the country. He does have an apartment, a tiny, basement place that constantly smells of the fish cannery nearby. He is also behind on the rent. 

They move him into their home, Maglor bedding down with the twins so that Thranduil and Brad can have a room to themselves. None of the other elves even suggest they share the man. 

Brad is Thranduil’s, should Brad want him in return. And in time, he does.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we had to put our cat down yesterday after having him with us for 12 years. He was my best friend and I don't know what to do without him and I just can't edit this chapter any more, so here. I don't know when my next update will be. I do know it will be the last chapter of this story, probably not much more than an epilogue.

Thranduil tries, and fails, to call the man Brad, yet he responds to Bard easily enough and there comes a time when Thranduil simply stops correcting himself. The others follow suit. If Bard assumes it is only a strange pet name, or wonders that it’s something more, he does not say.

Maglor and Elrohir become impossibly close. There is an undeniable sweetness between them. They would never push Elladan away, but increasingly they seek each other’s company, shut themselves up alone, and soon it is obvious. 

Elladan is unmatched, the odd one out, but strangely he does not seem to mind. He turns back to his old ways, once more seeking out mortal men and woman, and there is no denying that it suits him well. He is, as ever, too wild and restless to be bound to just one lover. 

Bard accepts all this unwaveringly, adapts readily enough to their strange dynamic. For Bard they do not pretend to be what they are not, but nor will they reveal anything to him. By unspoken agreement they have left it up to Thranduil to tell Bard what he will. They trust him to trust in Bard. 

“You’re all family.” Bard says one day, “I should have guessed. It’s the ears, isn’t it? It’s the ears, family trait. Oh, but you – you shared a bed - !”

The two of them are seated at the kitchen table across from each other, with Maglor and the twins still in bed down the hall. It is early morning, and Bard is, as ever, unreasonably early for work. He will not give it up; steadfast in the face of Thranduil’s urging and in spite of Maglor’s assurance that he would be no burden. He loves the music store, he insists, loves the people and the atmosphere and the row after row of shiny CDs in their decorated plastic cases. It is not a chore to work, he tells them. 

Thranduil only smiles, “With the exception of the twins, we are not family. I have no relation to any of them.”

Bard frowns thoughtfully. “I love your ears.”

“Is that all?”

“No.” is the reply, “But you knew that.”

It is teasing and flirtatious, but it is also the first time they come close to any confession of love. 

Bard says that they are so beautiful, so other-worldly, that they must be angels. Thranduil insists that they are not.

When Bard's razor breaks mid-shave one morning, the man is shocked to learn there is no other in the house he may borrow to finish the job. Thranduil finds Bard digging under the bathroom sink one day looking for the bottle of hair dye or bleach he is certain Thranduil must make use of. There is no harm in it, nothing but honest human curiosity, and they laugh over it. It becomes an easy game between them. 

“You’re movie stars, models. All this is done through plastic surgery.”

“No.”

"Vampires."

"Highly unlikely, as you've seen us eat, and walk about in daylight."

"Well then, clearly you're aliens from another planet."

“Absolutely not!”

He must tell him, of course, because even though Bard has settled into life with them easily enough and seems content, Thranduil still owes him the truth. 

Thranduil sits him down one day and explains his former life, and recalls the world in which they lived, and he can tell that when he is finished Bard does not believe him. He takes Bard to the parking lot, where Maglor’s inscription has been all but obliterated by rain and car tires and the city’s graffiti removal efforts.

“This is where your body lies” Thranduil tells him.

Thranduil describes the stone tomb to him, the cemetery of Dale. He takes Bard out of the city and up into the hills, and he maps out the landscape for him, the forest, Long Lake, the Lonely Mountain which now bears a different name. He drags him to the local museum and points out those artifacts which are of elvish or dwarven make, which ones were forged in Dale. It clashes with the history Bard has been taught.

Bard does not understand, but he tries. 

Thranduil attempts to teach Bard a smattering of Sindarin, but the man does not take to it easily. 

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Bard quips.

He is all of thirty two, with only the barest hint of lines at the corners of his eyes which deepen when he smiles. There is no grey in his hair, and his joints do not yet ache in the cold. 

“But you are so very, very young.” Thranduil replies.

“I look older than you.”

“Does that bother you?”

Bard shakes his head, “Something tells me that even when I am old and grey and stooped with age, you will look no older than you do today.”

It is true, of course, and Thranduil realizes that one day soon enough the man will die once again. He wonders where they will bury him this time, and, fleetingly, if Thranduil himself can lay down in the grave as well and rest forever beside the man. 

Yet perhaps it will be alright, because this time Bard knows of his love, and that love is returned as greatly as Bard is able, and that is more than Thranduil had any right to hope for. 

Though they share a bed, they have not yet made love. Thranduil can see the hesitation and uncertainty in Bard, and so he waits. But he has underestimated the man.

“I always thought I would marry one day.” Bard says one night, his voice soft and low. “I’ve always wanted kids. I think. I don’t know. It seemed right I should have them. Three of them, it’s almost like their names are on the tip of my tongue. Sometimes when I dream I think I can see their faces, but…”

Thranduil says nothing. He waits. The room is dark but for one streetlight shining through a gap in the curtains. The curtains had been Bard’s idea; they had not bothered with them before. He thinks of Bain and Sigrid and Tilda. He thinks of Bard’s wife, who he never met, and wonders if she too is out there one again, somewhere, dreaming of Bard. He knows he would do nothing to keep them apart, should it come to that. 

But Bard is still speaking, and as he listens to his words in the darkness, Thranduil realizes what it is the man is saying. He is letting go of his vague dreams, acknowledging that it is Thranduil who lays beside him, real and solid and corporeal and completely devoted to him in every way. 

“Maybe you’re crazy, I don’t know. You say things I can’t comprehend, things that don’t make sense. But if you are it is a harmless sort of madness, and I don’t know why I love you but I do. You have captured me completely, you are beautiful and brave and noble, and I think, now, I would not give you up for anyone else in world.”

It is mid-summer and the night is warm. They are both unclothed, a light cotton sheet their only concession to modesty. Thranduil rests on his side with his back to Bard, but he can feel the shift of the bed, is hyper-aware of the man’s warmth as Bard moves closer to him. He resists the urge to turn over. He is willing, always has been; it is Bard who must make his choice. 

Then there is the press of the man’s chest against his back, and Thranduil shudders. 

He rounds on the man then, bears him back down into the bed and makes room for himself between his thighs. Bard laughs, and it is surprise and delight, and Bard pulls their bodies flush against one another. 

He _needs_ Bard, can’t imagine taking another breath without Bard’s own breath intermingled with it. 

Simply holding the man in his arms is enough to make him want to weep as he did the first time he laid eyes on him again. He kisses his lips, and it is sweet torture and terrifying ecstasy.

Bard’s answering kiss is impossibly hungry, and Thranduil is astonished. He had assumed that Bard’s affections paled in comparison to his own, and that he would have to woo the man, work to convince him that Thranduil himself was worth loving in return. 

But no. The evidence of Bard’s physical need, at least, is prominent enough pressed between their bodies. And he is smiling. Grinning, even, and his eyes when they meet Thranduil’s own are bright.


	8. Epilogue

In late summer of 2013, Bard wakes beside Thranduil with a sharp gasp. It is early morning, the sun not yet risen. Thranduil reaches for him automatically, soothes the man’s hair back from his forehead as his breathing calms.

“You were having a nightmare.” He murmurs into his bare shoulder, kisses the skin there once, then again.

Bard shakes his head sharply, “No, not a nightmare.”

“You’re trembling.”

“Not a nightmare.” The man insists, “I saw you. I saw you dressed in long silver robes and sitting on a throne with antlers above you. Then I saw you riding a great elk, it's antlers wider than I am tall. You were wearing armour, finely detailed like the things Maglor makes when the mood takes him, and it sparkled in the sun. You were breathtaking. But then it changed. I saw your face, and it was injured and raw, healed as much as it ever would be, but painful to look at because I could only ever imagine the pain you must have endured. "

“You saw that? Yet I have never described those details to you.”

“It was just a dream.”

“No, it was not.”

Finally, finally, Thranduil lets the façade drop away, and the ruined side of his face is exposed, and perhaps then and only then does Bard begin to believe. 

One day Thranduil opens the small box and removes Bard’s signet ring. He brings it to Maglor, who takes it without question. When he returns it to Thranduil the band is once again whole.

Thranduil is relieved to find that the ring fits as easily as it ever did on the middle finger of Bard’s right hand. He slides it into place one day with no ceremony or explanation, in spite of Bard’s confusion. But Bard is never again seen without it on his hand. 

“This is only temporary.” Maglor says in a hushed voice when the two of them meet by chance in the dark kitchen late one night, “He is still mortal, and you are not, and he will still die.”

Thranduil nods, “yes, and yet one day he may be returned once more, Valar willing.”

“Valar willing.” Maglor echoes, though the both of them have long since given up any faith in the Valar, or any of the deities of man.


	9. Author's Note

There is now a companion piece to this called "By the Gift of the Valar", for those who are interested.

That is all.

Sorry.

 

_Exits, pursued by a bear_


End file.
